Mr. Mark's Classroom

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Through all the years of serving the church I have learned some things that I want to pass on to you over the next few weeks.  We don’t have to learn everything the hard way.  For me, there have been times of learning when I blew it and was stung so I never forgot the lesson.  There were times I learned for my pastor who blew it or shared with me wisdom and I took note and followed that path of wisdom.  I’m sure the same is true for you too.

Here are three things to know and practice in your children’s ministry:

Lately, I have noticed more churches with wonderful bulletin boards sharing the news of expecting babies coming soon.  This shows the heart of your preschool ministry to anticipate and planning for new babies coming to church.  In this episode, I speak with Delanee William, Childhood Ministry Specialist at LifeWay Christian Resources.  She has great and practical ideas she has used in her ministry.  Be ready to take notes and implement some new ideas that will make your baby room shine. 

Here is the video version but you can listen to the audio version on my podcast while you drive, exercise or just waiting in a line.   

You’re done!  Anytime there is a new show, it will be there waiting for you.  Enjoy!– Mr. Mark

Download the prayer guide: Praying For Your Expectant Child

This post was originally shared on Mr. Mark’s Classroom in September 2017.

The Green Cycle Bonus book is finished! This book is filled with fun games and activities for each of the 25 verses, as well as key passages, and Bible book games. Each idea is like a quick recipe with colorful pictures and simple, quick directions. There are lots of pages in the back you may copy to save you tons of time. This book is only available as a file download so you can use it now and not wait. We are looking forward to a fun year of learning our Green Cycle verses and key passages with these fresh new ideas. We hope you will use them too! Find this NEW Bible Skill Boosters – Green Cycle Book in our store.

I have met many children’s ministers who provided missions education in their program for children. There are few who engage children with regular service projects. My friend, Gina McKean, is a leader and example of serving others. She provides meaningful experiences where kids learn the joy of helping someone else. 

Gina is the Children’s Minister of Portland Avenue Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. She reaches children in lower socio-economic neighborhoods with very diverse family units. She loves and cares so completely- for over 29 years now. Gina shares many ideas through Mr. Mark’s Classroom for other church leaders to use. 

I interview Gina in this episode so you can get a glimpse of her heart and passion to engage kids in the gospel and serving others. Please excuse my gushing over her, but she is a true inspiration to me and so many others.

This post was originally shared on Mr. Mark’s Classroom in October 2017.

The Green Cycle Bonus book is finished! This book is filled with fun games and activities for each of the 25 verses, as well as key passages, and Bible book games. Each idea is like a quick recipe with colorful pictures and simple, quick directions. There are lots of pages in the back you may copy to save you tons of time. This book is only available as a file download so you can use it now and not wait. We are looking forward to a fun year of learning our Green Cycle verses and key passages with these fresh new ideas. We hope you will use them too! Find this NEW Bible Skill Boosters – Green Cycle Book in our store.

*Note- If you would like to listen to the audio version of this podcast during your daily commute, download the Podcast app and subscribe to Mr. Mark’s Classroom for free!  

Here is part two of this encore podcast with Miss Amy Adams. Our ministry hinges on our relationships. Everything God does is through relationships. It is worth stopping and evaluating how you are doing with the relationships God has given you.

Change your negative thinking into positive behavior. You are spending way too much energy arguing with people who are not in the room and even losing sleep over people’s actions. Some people, including the ministers on your staff can be jerks sometimes, but that does not mean you have to be a jerk too. Try thanking people and simply stop talking when others are voicing issues. Don’t join their circus because it only spirals out of control. Don’t be guilty of joining this way of thinking because it will soon define your reputation if it hasn’t already. Here are a few more things to watch for:

Try shifting into neutral and apply the brakes. You can improve being nice if you just stop talking, especially when you are not asked anyway. I suggest, change from a “To Do” list to a “To Stop” list and see if your relationships improve. 

What other relationship issues do you encounter in the church office? 

Yesterday, I spoke to a children’s minister in Kentucky. She is wanting to introduce Bible Drill during the summer and I cautioned her. Yes, I believe the kids should be memorizing Bible verses and learning the books of the Bible, but have a soft launch during summer. Begin with learning how the Bible is organized (Old and New Testaments, divisions, chapters, verses). Start in the beginning with the first five Books of Law for a few weeks then add the next 12 Books of History and then continue. Always play games that race to find books and verses. Teach a memory verse with a great reward like a water gun fight outside when everyone can recite Genesis 1:1 then move to more challenging verses.

Below is a printable copy of the sword drill that we used this year. It will give you the script for calling the drills. This could be great fun for the summer and might even continue into the fall with LifeWay’s Bible Skills, Drills and Thrills. These are available in your local store and online.  Bottom line- Have fun learning Bible Skills and they will come back and learn more.

Printable: Sword Drill

Bible Skill Resources

If you would like to listen to the audio version of this podcast during your daily commute, download the Podcast app and subscribe to Mr. Mark’s Classroom for free!  

Knowing how preschoolers learn is the biggest issue with our early childhood classes. It feels like teachers are moving toward childcare rather than Bible teaching. The problem is understanding how preschoolers learn. If we could understand this part, it would make more sense why we set up the classroom a certain way and the activities we teach that lead toward our Bible content.

I want to share with you the “Eight Ways Preschoolers Learn.” In this video I will discuss the first four ways and next week I will cover the last four. In case you want to see it again or recommend it to fellow teachers, you can search the podcast archive or I will put both of these video links under the resources tab for quick reference.

Train your workers so they can know how their students learn and they will be effective in the classroom.

Mr. Mark

*Note- If you would like to listen to the audio version of this podcast during your daily commute, download the Podcast app and subscribe to Mr. Mark’s Classroom for free!  

Here in Oklahoma, we are used to frightening weather. It can still scare us. We had a tornado hit our house just a couple of years ago. It ripped off part of our roof and proceeded to rain like crazy and flood that part of the house.  The damage was terrible but we were so thankful to have a cellar to be safe. The house was repaired (after months) and we continued on like it never happened. Ultimately, it was fine because we had a plan of action to stay safe.

I revisited our plan of action at the church in case of a tornado emergency, so I could have peace of mind that we are prepared for such an occasion. As spring gets closer, I want to encourage you to be sure you are prepared by posting emergency procedures in every classroom and practicing with the children. We have a scheduled practice every spring on a Wednesday night. We have many children in our care on Wednesdays and more often these types of emergencies occur in the afternoon and evening when the air temperature has gotten warmer.

Locate a safe place for people to shelter. I was happy with my choice at the church, then after consulting the architects office, I learned the I chose a room that had large AC units on the roof. It was deemed unsafe or dangerous if the units fell through. A new location was recommended and we quickly changed our safe room.  I encourage you to be a leader and make a plan and practice it even if other staff members do not.

Your

Mr.

VBS 2020 decorations are here!
Click here to check all of Mr. Mark’s VBS decorations.

*Note- If you would like to listen to the audio version of this podcast, download the Podcast app and subscribe to Mr. Mark’s Classroom for free! 

Hey friends. Welcome to Mr. Mark’s Classroom. My name is Mark Jones. I am excited to share with you another great tip about classroom management today, because I’ve got several of my own teachers who are really trying to make a great classroom even better. Sometimes we all need a little encouragement with some things to do. The first tip today that I want to tell you is, boys and girls need choices. They need choices.

Here’s what happened. This has been years ago. We had a fourth-grade class that did a lot of writing. Then they announced we’re going to have a great project, we’re going to build a newspaper. And the kids were like, “Oh, more writing. We always do writing.” Te sick of it, and complaining they didn’t want to go. 

I had had some different directors go in with those teachers, and try to help. They came back saying, “Those
women are impossible. They want to write everything.” So, I did what every good children’s minister does…he sends his wife…to be the director. She came back and she said, “You know, those ladies are very sweet and all,
but I can’t work with them.” I said, “Why not? I just don’t get it. Why can’t you work with them?” And she said, “Well, they don’t want to do anything, but write. Every activity we ever have has to be about writing, that’s a little gross. Where are the markers? Where’s the crayons? Where’s just the games?” She said, “They don’t do any of that. And I’ve tried and tried.”

So, I finally put it all together. These three ladies, retired school teachers, they loved writing. They thought all children should practice their writing, cursive, and they were all auditory learners. Reading and writing -it’s great stuff to them. It’s so much fun. The idea of having a newspaper that they built, you know, for a whole
month. Woo. That was great stuff. No, it was not. There are some children who like that, but not all. Because you’ve got children who are visual learners, and they want to be expressive with art, they want to draw. You have children who are just collaborators, and they want to work together in relationships, and you have children who want to work alone. You have some who want to work and do musical things or acting. I mean, there’s just so many different ways and methods that we can bring into this. So, I want to challenge you to provide choices, and the choices might not be the kind that you would like to do. 

 It seems like we rarely have drama with our methods in our classrooms. Anytime it comes along and there’s parts to read, and costumes to put on, I mean from first grade to pre-K, they love it. I challenge you to think about how you could bring into this, some choices for these kids. So, whenever we are working through our Bible study, they’re really getting to enjoy several things that they like. So maybe you don’t have the exact same thing at every table, but you’re letting them make the choices. And that’s a big deal. 

Also, I would say, be sure to see if you can get a man in your classroom. It’s a big deal. I see a lot of children
who don’t have a positive male role model in their life, and it’s too bad. Even the pastor’s kids, the son or the daughter, it’s good for them to have a man in the class and someone who’s not just the head thumper, which by the way we don’t thump heads, but someone who is not just there for discipline or for his deeper voice. That’s not what I’m talking about. He’ll do that anyway, because that’s just what adults do. But someone who actually will work with the kids, who will build relationships with them, who will teach the Bible, who will say, “This is what I believe. This reminds me of when I did this.” They need to hear how a Christian man operates. Even if you have to go out and enlist one to come in and be in your class, give him a few responsibilities at a time. Coach him with what you want him to do. Because as it turns out, men like to be successful, and we want to know if we’re doing it right. If we’re not doing it right, say it, because we want it to be right. We want to try new things, and sometimes we go a little too far, and you have to go, “Oh, that’s dangerous.” And that’s okay, you can mention that too. We don’t mind. There will be a great respect that these men will give to you, and that the children will see in their lives.

 So, enlist men to serve in your ministry, they need to have that kind of a role model. It might just validate the pastor’s child, and validate dad like, “Oh, my dad is not the only one that believes this stuff. There’s more people like him.” Because there are, or maybe it’s the child who doesn’t have a role model, and they’re like, “Oh, this is what a Christian man is. I like this. I think I choose that.” It goes back to both ways. It’s really a big blessing.

I prayed a long time for my church in Chickasha, that I would have a man in every single classroom, preschool through children. I was so glad the year came when there was a man serving in the bed babies all the way through the preteens. Sometimes there were multiple men in each class. Even now, I’m so blessed to have classes where two men teach, and there’s not a lady and I would like those ladies too. But that’s so cool to see so many men invested in children’s lives. It’s a big deal. Tell them how much you appreciate them, and what a big difference it makes, because that is so great. Give them choices and then partner them up with some men who will also speak into their life and encourage them. 

 I hope you’ll try a couple of these things. I’d love to hear what’s going on with your ministry, and how it’s
going. By the way, you can see all of this on the YouTube channel, Mr. Mark’s Classroom, or listen on iTunes. Really just subscribe in iTunes. It’s all free, all of it, and let your friends know. If you don’t mind, leave us a rating because other people are also going to hear about it, and see it that way in their searches. That’s
cool because our community is growing and building, and all the more to see children come to Christ because of people who are getting encouraged and equipped in teaching children the Bible.

Listen, your life and ministry, it’s a gift. So, go and make it  count. 

Related posts: 

Classroom Management, Part 1
Classroom Management, Part 2
Classroom Management, Part 3

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VBS 2020 is here!
Click here to check all of Mr. Mark’s VBS decorations.

*Note- If you would like to listen to the audio version of this podcast during your daily commute, download the Podcast app and subscribe to Mr. Mark’s Classroom for free! 

Hi friends. Welcome back to Mr. Mark’s classroom. I want to share with you some ideas that might help with classroom management. As I’m observing in the classes that I have here at my own church, I see there’s a couple of things that we really could pay attention to that maybe we have been neglecting. And we would be able to engage children even greater if we could put some of these things in order.

First of all, let me just talk about classroom arrangement. In preschool, we have children’s furniture that is for each age, for each size, that is appropriate for them. There’s a lot of different equipment in preschool that’s different than elementary. We have a home living center, a blocks center. We have the arts center often as an easel, maybe it’s tables. Most of the time it’s near a sink so we get access to be able to clean up. 

We have a science area, a shelf even. In home living, we use the stove and sink, the doll crib, the little chairs and table. But you can add in an ironing board, a refrigerator, a cupboard, a doll crib… we have that and the vinyl dolls. All of those types of things are used for role play or “home living,” is what we call it. It doesn’t have to be that. In churches, most of the time it goes to that because in the children’s life experience, that’s what they’ve learned is, at home, they see mom and dad and what they do. So, we are able to actually see the kids role play and even be the voices of the parents or of the baby, as they’re doing that role play.  That’s really pretty cool when you see children’s drama that’s going on. That’s fun.

Elementary kids love drama too. It’s just expressed a little differently. So, whenever we see our preschoolers having those type of times, we might see some children who won’t engage in that. Please know, it doesn’t always have to be a stove and a sink. You can cover that and it can be the eye doctor. It can be the fruit stand. Oh, by the way, I just saw a great picture. I posted it on my Instagram. If you’re not following me on Instagram, go ahead and do that. It’s https://www.instagram.com/mr.marks_classrm. I took a picture of it. They had made pumpkins and it was just a bag that they kind of wadded up. They stuffed it and then they twisted it to make the stem, and they painted the outside orange to be the pumpkin. They painted the stem brown and green. But they just tied it off. You could tie a leaf on there if you want. They put it on the floor in a row, three in row and they twisted up some green bulletin-board paper to be like stems and to be between the rows. Then they had a cash-register and some other fruit things. You could go and pick a pumpkin at their fruit stand. It was really cute. The teacher just took those pieces apart from the kitchen and she moved the stove over. She put some paper over it. It was just the counter now, to be able to walk up and buy the fruit or the pumpkin that they had. You can arrange those pieces and make it whatever you want. One of my favorite things that I ever did with that, was we had a wagon in there one day. We were talking about Sarah and Abraham moving to the land that God was giving them. We said, “Okay, it’s moving day. We’ve got to pack all this stuff up.” We were packing it up. We had bubble wrap and tissue paper and boxes and we were packing up every little bit of the stuff and the dishes and everything. We put them all in the wagon and we walked around the room and came back and said, “Oh, we’re here. This is our new house. Let’s all move in.” So, we started unloading the wagon and taking everything out, putting it all up. We must have moved that stuff around the room four or five times that morning just because we had so much fun moving. Anyway, it’s just role play. If you can facilitate that and engage in it yourself, you’ll see the preschoolers want to be a part of it as well. That’s a lot of fun.  

Now, your room arrangement with preschool, is that you’re going to have tables and shelves that will peninsula out from the wall, even in the center of the room, rugs and sitting areas, because these children are early-childhood learning and they’re learning in centers. 

So, they’re learning through play, and everything that we do in those centers always will point back to the Bible truth that we’re teaching that day. So, it’s always going to be a segue to talk about the Bible story. We really talk about the Bible story over and over all morning long when we’re teaching them. We just reinforce it again and again. Tell the story again, then tell it again. Those connections will be made with the Bible truth, those foundational stories. So, it’s all done through play and we have to set the room up in such a way it’s in centers. Or if it’s all flat and against the wall, they’ll just run. It’ll just be a skating rink and running with the bulls. So, be sure that you have the room arranged correctly for early childhood.  

Now, when you get to the elementary, it’s not so much. Matter of fact, we don’t have all of that equipment. Our supplies are usually just consumable supplies that we would use. Maybe there are games, like Bible skill games, that every room is equipped with. But everything we have is pretty much is flat and against the wall. If it’s just shelves or Bibles, storage like that, no problem. Then we have tables in the room with chairs around them, and they need to be mobile. We need to be able to move the chairs and play a game, a physical game. It’s not going to be playground games, but we can at least be getting up and moving. Physical learning is a big deal. You’ve got growing kids. You’ve got boys with muscles that need to be stretched. Girls that need to be stretched, and you need to have physical movement in your class. So, if it is hopping, if it’s having to just bend over or squat or stretch, whatever it may be, as long as it engages gross motor skills or large muscle groups, then you’re going to engage the learning in what they’re doing. 

Maybe it’s putting something in order. Maybe it’s not. I don’t know. I know often when I’m teaching kids, we are putting stuff together on the ground. We’re standing up at the tables, trying to get stuff put together or created, so that we can learn what the verse says. You just need to engage them that way. I suggest that your room should have three tables, of course it depends on how many children you have. As the children come in, they know which table they’re supposed to be at and they can begin learning right away. They can start the work as soon as they get there. Then, when we get to our Bible study time, I’m going to pull them over, I’m talking kindergarten, first grade all the way up to fifth and sixth grade. We’re going to come over to the circle time, and they can have their chairs around semi-circle facing me. I’ll have my Bible. My items are right there with me and I can lead through the Bible study. 

The problem that I see is, I am finding more and more teachers pushing their tables together like a big conference room table, and all sitting around it, and they never get up. Those children come in and are expected to sit there for an entire hour. Now, just so you know, sitting around a conference table, that’s how senior adults like to go to Sunday school.  That’s how they study the Bible and I’m not knocking them. That’s how they do it. But, that’s not how children do it. Just because you’re the most comfortable doing that, it does not mean the children are. They would rather be engaged with physical learning. They would be more in tune with you and not at a table if they were sitting in chairs around you. I dare you to try this. You just test it and see. They can hold their Bible in their lap. They can look at you. You can engage them better when you’re trying to tell the story and getting their noses back in the Bible to tell you what a verse says. You just need to set it up that way, and go. You try it and see if you have more kids engaged and enjoying their learning time in the classroom. I just challenge you to arrange your class that way, and you may have a whole bunch of stuff in there. It just needs to go to the trash. Maybe you are a hoarder and you need to quit it. I don’t know. There are some teachers who just collect, collect, collect… and your classroom cannot take all of it. You’re eating up your square footage with everything you’re dragging in there. See if you can clean it out. Make it feel fresh and clean and then arrange your room that it will give you the best for what you’re doing and you watch. You’ll be able to guide behavior much easier, because you’ve got a game plan and a room that’s arranged to do it. I hope you’ll give it a try. Please let me know. I’d love to hear a comment from you and what you think. Maybe you think your kids are senior adults. I don’t know. You’re wrong, but you might feel that way. Let me know. You can leave me a comment. You can see this at my channel at YouTube, also on iTunes. Leave us a rating and it helps us stay in front of people who are looking for this type of thing, and getting the training and the encouragement that they need. Listen, your life in ministry is a gift and I want you to go and make it count.  

Related posts: 

Classroom Management, Part 1
Classroom Management, Part 2

VBS 2020 is here!
Click here to check all of Mr. Mark’s VBS decorations.

*Note- If you would like to listen to the audio version of this podcast during your daily commute, download the Podcast app and subscribe to Mr. Mark’s Classroom for free!